Ackermann’s Function

May 25, 2012

In the 1920s, Wilhelm Ackermann demonstrated a computable function that was not primitive-recursive, settling an important argument in the run-up to the theory of computation. There are several versions of his function, of which the most common is

defined over non-negative integers m and n. The function grows very rapidly, even for very small inputs; as an example, A(4,2) is an integer of about 20,000 digits.

Your task is to implement Ackermann’s function. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

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Feel free to laugh at me. I tried to use visual C# for this. Stack overflow or there is some arbitrary stack limit where visual C# in its infinite wisdom decided I didn’t know what I was doing. Fun times